THE ORIGINAL RECYCLER

Author's Personal Collection

Banana slugs are undoubtedly the most popular animal seen along the Redwood Loop Trail at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. This colorful creature delights the eye with its bright yellow hue. The shell-less gastropod mollusk of the genus Ariolimax is the second largest slug in the world, measuring up to 10 ½ inches in length. As their name implies, slugs move leisurely through life. But give them enough time and they cover a fair distance, moving up to 32 feet per hour. At that pace it’s a good thing that slugs can live up to seven years of age.

The slug’s bright yellow color serves as the best camouflage since on the forest floor they resemble a yellowed leaf from a California Bay tree. It is upon the forest floor where the banana slug plays its vital role. Because redwood is imbued with tannic acid, the redwood forest contains fewer insects than other forests. The banana slug plays the part of forest floor recycler. They consume rotting plant and animal material including animal droppings and a variety of fungi, which in turn provides nutrients to enrich the surrounding soil for plant growth. 

Author's Personal Collection

In addition to its vivid color, another fond attribute of the banana slug is its shinny covering of slime. Its thick layer of slime helps the slug retain needed moisture and even aids in its slow trek through forest debris. Most importantly slime helps protect the slug by transmitting a numbing toxin to any predator unluckily attempting to make a meal of it. Occasionally the banana slug does fall prey to predators. The wily racoon has been known to roll banana slugs in dirt and leaf debris, thus removing much of the slime and making a passable morsel of it. 

Six banana slugs on a log at The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park - Author's Personal Colleciton

In my book, Historic Tales of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park – Big Trees Grove, I stated that I never came across any historical visitor account mentioning the grove’s most often seen resident, the banana slug. I must eat my words now. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across this brief mention in a book by Mary Ellen Bamford in 1889:

"I once found one of these huge slugs inside of General Fremont. For the benefit of the too startled reader I would hasten to explain that the General mentioned is a huge redwood, one of the 'Big Trees' near Santa Cruz. Damp woods and the vicinity of springs delight Ariolimax and in such places this creature may hide during the dry summers."

Ms. Bamford was a remarkable woman. She not only had a fondness for natural history but also wrote twenty-one books on a variety of subjects. In addition to her writing, Ms. Bamford served as a substitute librarian at the Oakland Library from 1906 to 1939.

She became a committed prohibitionist and was active with the Woman’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. "In contrast to most Americans at the time, Bamford was sympathetic to Chinese and other Asians attempting to enter the United States. She was the author of Angel Island: the Ellis Island of the West, which was published by Woman's American Home Baptist Mission Society in 1917."

Source: Up and Down the Brooks by Mary E. Bamford, The Riverside Library for Young People, Number 4, Houghton, Mifflin and Company: Boston, 1889; “Lives of the Dead: Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland,” by Michael Colbruno, March 6, 2016, http://mountainviewpeople.blogspot.com/2016/03/mary-ellen-bamford-1857-1946-american.html.